Feb. 15Luke Davies, “An Evening of Journeys”

Luke Davies will discuss his Academy Award Nominated Screenplay for Lion, based on the remarkable true story of a lost Indian boy’s quest to find his roots.

Luke Davies is a novelist, screenwriter, and essayist whose poetry has garnered popular and critical acclaim. Born and raised in Sydney, Australia, Davies earned a BA from the University of Sydney. He is the author of the poetry collections Four Plots for Magnets (1982), Absolute Event Horizon (1994), Running With Light (1999), Totem (2005), and Interferon Psalms (2011). Davies’s semi-autobiographical novel Candy (1997) was made into a movie in 2006, starring Heath Ledger. His other novels include Isabelle the Navigator (2000) and God of Speed (2008). Davies wrote the screenplay for the acclaimed film Lion (2016).

Feb. 16Luke Davies, Poetry/Fiction Reading

*Note: On Feb. 13 the University Film Series will screen Lion(Australia, 2016) 118 minutes. Directed by Garth Davis. Introduced by Rob Davidson, English.

A film based on real events that tells the affecting story of Saroo, who accidentally boards a train away from his home in India and can’t find his way back. Eventually adopted by an Australian couple, Saroo starts to look for his biological family again as an adult.

Claude Marks is a former political prisoner, who along with Donna Willmott was indicted in an escape conspiracy involving Puerto Rican Independentista, Oscar Lopez. He helped found the Freedom Archives, a San Francisco-based organization, after leaving prison; the purpose of the Freedom Archives is to preserve and make accessible documents and materials from and about radical political history here and abroad to pass this information—and spirit—on to future generations.

Stewart Weaver, professor of history at the University of Rochester, is the co-author of Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering From the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes heralded as “the book of a lifetime for its authors, an awe-inspiring work of history and storytelling.” – New York Times

Award-winning documentary that “chronicles not the aftermath of the petrochemical disaster but one community's attempts to stop the next before it occurs. Benefiting from a sympathetic protagonist surrounded by colorful characters, the film outshines many eco-docs in its often dramatic account of their attempt to halt progress of the controversial Keystone Pipeline.” (John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter)

Simon Coleman is an anthropologist and Chancellor Jackman Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto. His writings include Pilgrimage Past and Present in the World Religions and Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion.

The Modern Western individual Self, for centuries required to strive toward objectivity and solipsism, is shifting from a position of detachment and abstraction to one of re-immersion in the ensouled world of archetype. From Carl Jung to James Hillman to Richard Tarnas, psychologists have intimated this call to re-engagement with archetype for the past century. Clinical psychologist Dr. Stephen Diggs and contemporary mythologist Dr. Rebecca Diggs will discuss the legacy these psychologists contributed to our contemporary understanding of the Self’s need for relationship with archetype, invoking examples and applications from their respective fields, including the therapy room and the television screen.